Thursday, June 05, 2008

Backing up Zotero

I have been an enthusiastic advocate of Zotero, the bibliographical research tool plug in for Firefox. A couple of months ago, my laptop crashed. I felt quite smug when the computer guy at work began the speech about backing up and I explained that I had multiple back-ups, on flashdrives, on Google docs, on GSpace and elsewhere. (He still felt obliged to finish the speech, shaking his head about how academics just don't back up their data and how baffling it was, etc.) But there is one thing I had never even thought about backing up, my Zotero data. I suppose on some level I imagined that it was being stored out there in some dark corner of cyber-space, but it is not. The whole lot got lost when the computer crashed beyond repair. So I read Tim Bulkeley's entry on Sansblogue today with interest:

A useful post. Let's hope that in the long term Zotero provide a decent, easy back-up service. Also, it would be helpful to have an easy sharing facility so that one could straightforwardly transfer the data from one computer to another.

2 comments:

Well, it isn't particularly easy, but you can use the free FolderShare to keep Zotero synced across two computers. Works for me for now...For directions: http://bibleandtech.blogspot.com/2008/03/vertov-for-zotero-update-zotero-and.html

Step 1: buy a macStep 2: buy an external HDstep 3: use Time Machine, a full system backup built right into the OS. if your laptop crashes, you boot your new laptop from the HD to restore it exactly like it was.